Leah Abramson — Transcript

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity, spelling, and readability. Music excerpts are noted where they appear in the episode.

Cold open

Leah Abramson: The world needs art and I need art. I guess you just have to find a way to do it anyway. You know, it doesn’t have to be earth-shatteringly important to the world. I mean, look at the state of the world, right? But art’s never going to make anything worse.

[Music: “Get off the treadmill / What have you got to prove? / Get off the treadmill / You got more to lose / By running away, going nowhere / You can’t escape, but you can’t stay still”]

Eric Chan: I’m Eric Chan and you are listening to Inlet Wire, your direct line to BC artists.

In this episode, Leah Abramson returns with new music under The Abramson Singers name. We talk about what changed in the years between records, how these songs came together, and why songwriting still matters to her now.

Leah Abramson: I started writing songs sort of more in that genre that I was writing in before — lots of harmonies, more personal songs. And so it felt like a fit with the past project instead of my own thing.

I know that name has a little bit of recognition with some older fans, so I thought it would be good to just bring back the name because it felt like the same project. I was working with some of the same musicians, so it felt like a natural sort of — like a big break, but then a continuation of the same thing.

Eric Chan: There was a lot of life in between the last release and this one, and you can hear that in the way Leah talks about coming back to music now.

Leah Abramson: In between, I had a baby in 2019. And now she’s in school, so I have a little bit more time. I’ve just been teaching.

It’s been a bit of a weird time. Like it’s been a bit of an existential time, kind of figuring out what I’m doing and who I am as an artist. Going on tour for long periods of time no longer fits with my life. So what does it mean to release music when you don’t really fit within the way that people normally promote and make music? If I can’t do the things that people normally do, what does it look like to release music?

For a long time, I was just sort of on the fence about even doing it at all — even though I love writing. Writing music is my favourite thing in the world.

Eric Chan: And when the songs did start coming, they were taking shape a little differently this time.

Leah Abramson: This was pretty different. It was also different because I started writing songs on piano instead of guitar. I think there’s only one song on the album that I wrote on guitar, which is very different for me. So the chord progressions are different, and the way that I wrote music was really different on a different instrument.

I’m not a good piano player at all. So I have somebody else — I’ve got Tyson Naylor, who’s a great piano player, actually playing on the album. But the way that they were written, I was looking at chords on the piano, and you just make different choices on a different instrument. So that was really fun. It sort of expanded my palate and expanded the way that I thought about harmony, which was a great exercise for me.

Eric Chan: The writing changed, and so did the way this record started coming together.

Leah Abramson: I was actually working with a friend who I haven’t worked with before, but who I’ve known for a long time just through the Vancouver music scene — Jason Starnes. He does his own music under the name Bells Clanging.

I wasn’t really sure I was going to make anything. But Jason was like, “Oh, you’re writing songs — send me something. Maybe we can, you know, I’ve got some recording equipment, maybe we can just make some demos and play around.” I thought, oh, it’d be fun to actually get into doing this again in a very casual way. So I sent things to him, and then he just kind of got me in.

And then it just sort of snowballed where, oh, OK, we could just make an album. We could just do it ourselves. Let’s get together once a week and just record some things. And then it kind of snowballed a little bit.

[Music: “When she swam inside her belly / I knew they were gone / Wild nights with abandoned men / Who’d always look around / Move away outside the city / And plant roses, roses / Move away outside the city and plant roses”]

Eric Chan: One thing I really liked here was that even with all these changes, she still wanted this record to begin in a very Abramson Singers way.

Leah Abramson: It feels like tradition to start the Abramson Singers albums with an a cappella track. So I’d written all the other songs and I was like, oh, no, I need to start it with an a cappella track. So it was actually the last song that I wrote, because I felt like I needed to write something like that.

I had this idea for a long time to use my daughter’s words, because when she was four, she would just say these things that were so weird and surreal, and we just had this list of things that she’d said. I really wanted to just turn them into a song. I’d been thinking about this idea for a long time, but I’d never done it. So I thought that would be good lyrics to use for something a cappella.

Eric Chan: We also talked about lyrics, and how Leah approaches writing them.

Leah Abramson: I think a lot about lyrics, and I do a lot of editing. I like to make sort of sneaky literary references that not everybody catches, things like that. I just think a lot about the lyrics and I work at them a lot to make sure they’re the way that I want them to be. Even if I’m using swear words, or even if I’m, you know, making kind of off-kilter comments, they’re on purpose.

Leah Abramson: I think it’s “Can You See It Now.” I just feel like it contains a lot of the last few years with my family, and also the way I’ve been thinking about thinking — the way I’ve been thinking about our brains and the way that we see the world, and the experience of just being a human in relation to other people.

The thoughts and the emotions and the sort of philosophy behind it are still going in my brain. I’m still thinking about those concepts, and I’m not sure that I will ever fully figure it out.

I’m still parenting. And even though she no longer pukes in the car, it’s still part of my early experience as a parent. Having to be totally outside of yourself, and then also being an interior person and living your life — experiencing the world, and yet having to be totally present for somebody else, in this sort of back and forth, which is kind of constant.

[Music: “But I can see it now, I can see it now / When you close your eyes / What do you remember from the time I moved in / In the middle of November / You climbed a volcano / And left me the records in your will”]

Eric Chan: By the end of the conversation, it felt less like a return and more like Leah finding her way back into songwriting.

Leah Abramson: This was a good thing because it got me writing songs again — like my own songs, without a bigger project. And I love projects. I love concept albums. I would love to write somebody’s musical for them.

But it’s also good to just keep writing songs, especially when you’re teaching songwriting — you’ve got to practice what you preach. So it was a good exercise to kind of get back into it and be like, ah, this is why I love writing songs so much.

Eric Chan: And that’s The Abramson Singers, with the new EP, Anything You Could’ve Been. I’m Eric Chan, and this is Inlet Wire, your direct line to BC artists.

[Music fades out]